"Ōoku: The Inner Chambers" Is A Fascinating Deconstruction of Gender
In today's pop culture lexicon, deconstructions of gender are everywhere. The dystopian TV series Handmaid's Tale, based on the book of the same name, is about what happens when theocratic Christian patriarchy dominates all aspects of the United States. And, of course, Amazonian mythology has been rehashed in everything from Xena Warrior Princess to Wonderwoman.
Netflix's Ōoku: The Inner Chambers is among these stories, as it dared to push boundaries and challenge conventional norms around gender. As an adaptation of a manga series, this show delicately positions itself in a socio-historical context, the Edo or Tokugawa period, when Japan remained insular, shutting its doors to foreign interventions. However, there's an imaginative twist: this self-imposed isolation is due to the devastation of Red-face smallpox, slashing the male populace to a mere fourth of that of women.
Historically, gender-plague tales have been a mirror to the societal tensions and anxieties surrounding gender politics. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1915 creation Herland, envisioned a society that, following a volcano eruption, thrived in the absence of men. Gilman was impacted by the racist underpinnings of first-wave feminism, and her "ideal" society would not be considered great by today's standards. Gilman was a eugenicist, and her narrative explicitly references Aryan superiority, with women refusing to have children with "undesirable traits."
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